>Ten to twenty per cent is not as far fetched as you may think.
The horse does not have to be hooked up to an IV bottle for it to be in
trouble. Take a good look at our rides and their completion rates before
you go and say I'm totally whacked out here.
Howard, the whole point of PULLING the horse is to
eliminate him from competition BEFORE he is in trouble. Most of the time
we manage to get that done. I'll trust Bob's figure of 2.5% metabolic
pulls. Most of those pulls occur BEFORE the horse is damaged. The
tools we have developed over the years have helped us to do that. And
despite detractors who think that "nobody did anything back then" I'd submit
that we DO catch most horses before they are truly "in trouble." What we
need to be discussing here is the further honing of our skills and the further
addition of "tools" so to speak, to enable us to also catch the ones that we
still miss.
At the risk of making this personal, are you perhaps
misled here from personal experience, wherein 10 to 20% of the time the horse
YOU are riding is getting into trouble? From the stories you've shared, I
sometimes wonder.
From what I've seen, the majority of pulled horses come
back to run another day. That's the whole point of pulling them in the
first place--to protect them and to safeguard their welfare. The fact that
they return and complete successfully is a sign that by pulling them, we've done
that in most cases. And it also suggests that in most cases, we pull
them in time. To suggest that the pull rate equates to horses in trouble
just simply doesn't wash.
I'll say it one more time--we need to look realistically
at defining the problem, and blowing it all out of proportion with emotional
rhetoric actually gets in the way of doing that, instead of helping.
Instead of blowing up the numbers, Howard, can you instead say something
constructive about either how we might possibly detect the horses in
trouble that we are not currently detecting, or how we can better prepare horses
so that they are less apt to get into trouble? Or perhaps how we can
identify horses and/or riders that pose a risk? The discussion about
Matthew's pulse concept at least got a new idea on the table, with some possible
merit. But once again, instead of discussing the pros and cons of
such a proposal, the discussion has been dragged back to emoting. I'd
far rather spend my time looking for and discussing possible solutions than
listening to inflamatory rhetoric that accomplishes nothing.
My thanks to those who chose to discuss a possible
alternative these past few days instead of simply trying to thrash the very
people who are out there working hard to find solutions.
